Known as the Carolina Beer Guy, Kiss covered the Asheville beer scene since its inception with the opening of Highland Brewing more than 20 years ago. Today, Asheville is recognized as a national leader in the craft beer industry. The city, dubbed Beer City USA in an unscientific online poll for several years, is also home to more craft breweries per capita than almost any other city in the U.S.

The Citizen-Times kicked out Kiss, and several other newsroom employees, a couple of weeks ago as corporate parent Gannett slashed staff nationwide amid an accelerating downturn in print advertising sales. Kiss had worked for the newspaper for 32 years.

Despite the diss, Tony Kiss won’t be far from the local craft beer scene. Kiss has been a steady freelancer for Southern Brew News for awhile now. And AshvegasDotCom is happy to announce that Kiss will be a regular contributor. In fact, be on the lookout for coverage of Highland Brewing’s release of Cold Mountain ale later this week from Kiss and Ashvegas.com.

Mountain Xpress has also announced that Kiss will cover beer for the Asheville alt weekly. “He will lend his considerable knowledge and expertise in writing a regular column, covering breaking stories and more,” Xpress wrote on its page on Facebook.

The Asheville nonprofit Food Connection is partnering with Wicked Weed Brewing and its Cultura restaurant, the YMCA of Western North Carolina, and Red Wing Enterprises for the event aimed at helping service industry workers.

One of the biggest immediate impacts has been the release of about 200 people from the Buncombe County jail, a long-sought after goal by some local officials who want to convert the county jail from a holding pen for low-level, nonviolent, poor suspects to a lockup reserved for serious offenders.